Bo Eder
Platinum Member
So as some of you know, I acquired a 1977 Slingerland kit as a tribute to my parents and it's basically what they bought me back in 1977 and started me down this road of drumming.
Anyway, the kit I got was a re-wrap, and the drums themselves are in pretty decent shape. But they did not have the badges (the seller did not have the correct tools to re-install the badges, but he was nice and sent them along with the kit). So the drums were taken to Pro Drum in Hollywood where Stan installed the badges for me. At first I wanted this to just be a players kit to use, but the more I thought about it, you gotta have the badges on the Slingerland drums. They just look nicer with the badges - although the badges themselves aren't big and gaudy like some manufacturer's badges these days.
I used the drums at a rehearsal the other night and loved the tone. Funny thing about these drums - being from 1977, I didn't expect them to be perfectly round - and they aren't. So this results in a finicky-to-tune drum. And I've also found out that they don't sound good with thick double-ply heads - these definitely sound best with coated ambassadors. I got PowerStroke 3's front and back on the bass drum and those work fine. Because of the slight out-of-roundness, the tuning range is somewhat compromised, and these only sound good slightly tighter in the higher range of jazz tuning. At first I was bummed out thinking I'd never be able to get that thick low-end out of the floor tom, and then remembered that my original set from 1977 also had a hard time getting tuned because quality control just wasn't that great back then. I did alot of futzing with my original Slingerland kit and that's just how it was back then. Today we take it for granted that shells are slightly undersized and perfectly round so tuning is really easy, and you get the full range too. So I think today we're spoiled. Back then I just made do. But once I realized that, the kit started to speak well and actually sounds quite good. The spurs on the bass drum are not original, but it was a god choice. Even on my original Slingerland kit, I changed the spurs out when I could.
Stan did a great job and the grommet work looks original. Here's a couple of pics where you can' definitely tell there are badges....
Anyway, the kit I got was a re-wrap, and the drums themselves are in pretty decent shape. But they did not have the badges (the seller did not have the correct tools to re-install the badges, but he was nice and sent them along with the kit). So the drums were taken to Pro Drum in Hollywood where Stan installed the badges for me. At first I wanted this to just be a players kit to use, but the more I thought about it, you gotta have the badges on the Slingerland drums. They just look nicer with the badges - although the badges themselves aren't big and gaudy like some manufacturer's badges these days.
I used the drums at a rehearsal the other night and loved the tone. Funny thing about these drums - being from 1977, I didn't expect them to be perfectly round - and they aren't. So this results in a finicky-to-tune drum. And I've also found out that they don't sound good with thick double-ply heads - these definitely sound best with coated ambassadors. I got PowerStroke 3's front and back on the bass drum and those work fine. Because of the slight out-of-roundness, the tuning range is somewhat compromised, and these only sound good slightly tighter in the higher range of jazz tuning. At first I was bummed out thinking I'd never be able to get that thick low-end out of the floor tom, and then remembered that my original set from 1977 also had a hard time getting tuned because quality control just wasn't that great back then. I did alot of futzing with my original Slingerland kit and that's just how it was back then. Today we take it for granted that shells are slightly undersized and perfectly round so tuning is really easy, and you get the full range too. So I think today we're spoiled. Back then I just made do. But once I realized that, the kit started to speak well and actually sounds quite good. The spurs on the bass drum are not original, but it was a god choice. Even on my original Slingerland kit, I changed the spurs out when I could.
Stan did a great job and the grommet work looks original. Here's a couple of pics where you can' definitely tell there are badges....